VISTAs are wild like tigers!

Michelle, Max, Emily and Carrie

Michelle, tigers, Carrie, Melissa and Emily 

Visiting Sioux Falls

I  love Queen Anne's Lace. Did you know it's a type of wild carrot? They were growing next to the river at Falls Park. Whoever mows the lawn left this patch of Queen Anne's Lace alone in a corner. 

Ok, so I am not so clever at uploading photos to the blog as I thought I was. It seems each pic inserts itself at the top of the post so after I rearranged several times, and it kept rearranging back to the order the blog wanted rather than the order I wanted, I decided to just put captions under the photos and leave the narrative up to the viewer. In no particular order, these are some of the things to see in SF! (That's Sioux Falls for those of you who were thinking of the other SF)

The inscription read:
We play with our friends,
turn around and then
 no one is there.
Where did everyone go?

Bacchus

A screech owl, native to South Dakota, rests atop Max's head while his handler watches close by. This month was zoo month at Hy-Vee grocery stores in Sioux Falls. The zoo mobile came out with ten animals as an educational outreach. Michelle met us at the Hy-Vee on Marion to meet and touch the animals.

A cool looking dog-ish sculpture

Monday evening, Carrie, Emily, Melissa and Michelle splurged on milk shakes and cheeseburgers while we talked about our VISTA jobs across the state. Fortunately, at Phillips Diner, if you order a milk shake your burger is half price, which put our meals within our fancy budgets. After dinner, we took the sculpture walk around downtown Sioux Falls. 

As life imitates art...

To infinity and beyond! A common VISTA goal :)

A Madagascar giant cockroach is about to crawl on me! This was one of two creepycrawlies on the zoo mobile; the other was a giant African millipede.

Inscription: Sphere refers to the layers of our being and the process of ‘shedding our shadow.’ It is a physical representation of striving for a deep, personal understanding and growth

This sculpture represents a glacier, how glaciers constantly shift and reflect light.

VISTA Buddies in Action--Aberdeen!

Chelsea and Carrie

Yesterday, I drove to Aberdeen to visit Chelsea, a VISTA recently posted at VoA in Aberdeen to work with RSVP. This morning, Chelsea and I went to a Senior Center to serve lunch with the Congregate Meals program. This program serves meals for seniors in a place where they can gather and socialize. Since today is the 106th birthday of the ice cream cone, dessert was delicious! 

Seniors enjoying a congregate meal at Anderson Senior Center in Aberdeen

After serving, we enjoyed our lunch with some other volunteers. Aberdeen is a very friendly city and I am glad to have had this opportunity to meet with some of our Volunteers of America staff in the opposite corner of the state. Aberdeen office has recently started a Mommy's Closet, too. I am interested to see how Mommy's Closet in Aberdeen compares to Rapid City once they get going full-swing. Mommy's Closet in Aberdeen has a table at the local farmer's market and they sell donated teddy bears to help cover some of their costs. 

Aberdeen's Mommy's Closet and some of the teddy bears

Youth Works and Volunteers of America clean up the neighborhood!

Today's Youth Works group helped clean up our neighborhood. We teamed up with Devin and Aaron from Youth and Family Services' (YFS) Fatherhood First and went out into the world. We started at Volunteers of America and three teams spread out to collect trash along Roosevelt Park and around the Prairie Market grocery store.We got permission from the city to clean up the area and put all the trash we collected in to approved bins around the areas where we worked.

Aaron from YFS was in my group. We went down to the park to collect around the pond, and then walked back to Mommy's Closet along the road behind the swim center collecting bottles and cups, gum wrappers and cigarette butts along the way. We added our full trash bags to the collection bin at the ball field. 

What a great group! Thanks, guys!

Welcome Emily!

Emily joined Robbie and Carrie for lunch at Alternative Fuel, a local coffee shop and hang-out. Emily told us what she did as a VISTA in Montana. She started a shelter for homeless families and will be working in Mission to start an RSVP. So...Welcome to SD, Emily! 

A Day of Hope

This weekend, I joined the 25th Hills Alive for a Day of Hope. Day of Hope was an invitation-only event for families in need. We passed out invitations for two weeks prior to the event. The first 200 people with an invitation who registered received a big box of groceries (that we helped to pack with Youth Works on Tuesday before the Day of Hope). 
We set our table next to registration to tell folks about Mommy's Closet and Youth and Family Intervention, two of the programs Volunteers of America, Dakotas offers in Rapid City. We also passed out flyers for a carnival we will host in September.

There was a great turn-out. More than 600 people registered out of 1000 invitations, and we distributed 209 boxes of groceries. There were games and prizes for the kids, and a free lunch at noon! It doesn't get much better than this. Just before lunch, a local church youth group performed a Human Video. I was unfamiliar with the term, but I learned as I watched. They acted out a silent skit to the music and brought the message to life. It's amazing what we can do with the right attitude and a little imagination. 

Big Sioux Sun Run!

Here's a link to the run/walk I was talking about on the conference call last week. It's happening on Saturday, August 7th. Proceeds go to the Volunteers of America, Dakotas After School program in Brandon, which I'm helping to set up. It's a one mile or 5K course so grab your tennis shoes and head to Brandon! Cost is $20 (which includes a t-shirt and refreshments and the satisfaction of knowing you helped out a great cause!).

Big Sioux Sun Run

Youth Works helps Mommy's Closet kick off a Day of Hope for Rapid City families!

Mommy's Closet will represent Volunteers of America, Dakotas, this weekend at the Day of Hope, part of Hills Alive, a free summer concert this weekend. 

This year marks the 25th anniversary for this summer concert weekend. To celebrate, the festival has expanded to include a Day of Hope. Day of Hope is an invitation-only event for low-income families in the area. Everyone is welcome, but the first two hundred participants with an invitation will receive a box of groceries, carefully packed by volunteers. 

Youth Works has come to Mommy's Closet each week this summer to help around the office. Youth Works is a national summer program that pairs middle-school youths with non-profits for a week of service in another state. Today, our Youth Works group was from Colorado and we asked them to help us pack the boxes for the Day of Hope.

Youth Works Volunteers put the boxes together, expertly taped the bottoms to make sure no groceries spill out, and put one item from each group of groceries into a box. 

These girls found a pallet jack and filled six boxes at a time! Another group of volunteers will finish making and filling the boxes tomorrow for this weekend's concert and Day of Hope for Rapid City families.